Saturday, 28 May 2011

Published late last night (UK time) - 'Hanging Around', a collection of 12 interlinked stories, out with Renaissance Sizzler Editions.

Book blurb:

It’s two in the morning, and Mariska is dangling from a rope and displaying a lot of flesh to her tormentors. And she giggles. She’s been looking for something new in her life, and being a film extra in a low-budget zombie horror movie is certainly new… Twelve stunning chapters follow Mariska’s journey from barista to member of a group of bohemian artists, actors and others. She’s inducted into their fetish-oriented lifestyle, and along the way she’s tied, whipped, fisted and more in situations ranging from a film set to a lesbian club to an art exhibition. Oh, and somehow she finds time to write a journal about it. Fulani’s erotic stories, often dark and with BDSM-based themes, have appeared in numerous anthologies and ‘zines.

There's more, including a table of contents and a couple of free short stories involving the same characters but aren't in the book (they were written later, including one to go with the cover which I only saw a day or two ago), over at my other blog DeliciouslyDeviant.

'Go Find Yourself' is story about a divorced woman who re-evaluate her life and begins to explore long-held but unrealised fantasies about sex with another woman. She attends a gay and lesbian organisation's annual camp where she meets Ross, who captivates her and ultimately seduces her.

Tuesday, 24 May 2011

As you may have seen on my other blog, DeliciouslyDeviant, a couple of days ago I randomly discovered a new(ish) thing called Nu Fetish. I won't repost the stuff from my other blog since you can go there and read it, but it suffices to say it got some of my creative muscles working overtime, because I've intermittently been thinking about doing some video projects myself (though not by myself, obviously; Velvet Tripp is a professional photographer with a camera that will take HD video as well as images). This line of thought started because I had to have a go at some video editing recently in a completely different context.

A lot of the Nu Fetish stuff turns up on Vimeo.com, so some poking about there revealed more interesting stuff that isn't Nu Fetish but is erotic, in a 'thinking' kind of a way. I'm suddenly finding myself very inspired by some of the things I found on Vimeo, in particular Fabrice Noir's 'Naked Walk' and Alfil Barcelona's 'Black Dreams' as well as videos of bondage performances at the recent Boundcon VIII that I posted about recently.

Sunday, 22 May 2011

Did the suspension demo on Thursday - worked out fine, and thanks to the two bondage bunnies apart from V on whom I demo'd other kinds of quick ties as well.

Afterwards I had a go at my 'signature' tie of suspending someone from a dance pole. This is technically easy if you know the right knot. However, prusik knots basically tighten up more with increased pressure so trying it (a) with someone who was light and (b) deciding to use a second climbing sling around the pole both for safety and so I had an additional space to use carabiners, didn't work out all that well. Live and learn, I guess. We did it instead on an upright pole of the 'cube', the piece of kit we took with us.

Note to self - could usefully do with a shibari suspension ring. This would mean I could tie multiple ropes into a single ring hung on a single climbing sling. Ones with welds seem to be about £25 and the high-grade ones cut from a block of steel with no welds on them are about £60, so it won't break the bank. Something to think about in the next week or so.

Meanwhile someone sent me this link to some bondage performances that took place a week or so ago at Boundcon VIII in Munich [NB: link updated 24 May, the original link was to a search rather than to Vimeo content - click the bit that says 'See all 9 videos' from the user profile to get the most recent Boundcon footage listed].

Went to a 'Bi Fun Day' yesterday with V - I'm not, she is, I was showing a bit of solidarity. The interesting thing was, a good proportion of the people there are people I've known on the fetish scene for a long while, many of whom I'd previously met at the suspension bondage demo we did on Thursday. And many of whom are also regulars at one or several of the local munches. I don't imagine everyone who's bi is also into bdsm, any more than everyone who's gay or lesbian is. I suspect it's just a function of how the local networks work. On the other hand, I'd also suspect identifying as, broadly, non-straight is a process/journey that tends to open one's mind to a range of 'alternative' sexual practices and gives one 'permission' to explore them. Would be interested in hearing from anyone who knows more than me about this kind of stuff.

Other bits of daily life have intruded, but they're pretty boring. Things are due to be published in the next week or so but there's no point telling you about them until I have a proper URL to direct you to. And I'm girding myself up to write the last 15000 or so words of the novel, though am likely to be distracted by a couple of (probably) short projects that will hopefully only take a day or so to put together, assuming I can find a day to do them in.

Thursday, 19 May 2011

I've blogged before about how the adult entertainment industry isn't quite the seedy operation you might think, because big chunks of it are owned, usually at several careful arm's lengths, by well-known corporations. (Parts of it are seedy in other ways, of course, but that's a different story.) And I've mentioned that because of the popularity of adult entertainment, it's one of the industries that tends to move quickly into new technologies and exploit them.

News has come to me, though, that the relationship between the adult industry and new computer products and technologies is actually a planned process, because major players in the computer industry use the adult industry, albeit in secret, to develop and beta test their new technologies and products. Despite the well-known public position of some of these companies on adult content, they are all to aware how their products will be used and some have missed out big time in the past by trying to "adult content proof" their new products.

This is from a reputable source - the BBC. The piece is "Superbrands' success fuelled by sex, religion and gossip", published 17 May on the BBC website. It relates to a programme 'Secrets of the Superbrands' broadcast on BBC Three at 2100 BST on Tuesday, 17 May. For those in the UK, it will be available on iPlayer for a while. For those outside the UK, it will no doubt make its way onto Youtube sometime soon via the BBC's Youtube channel.

Friday, 13 May 2011

Just had to repost this as Blogger lost it in a service outage, but never mind...

I may be a writer but it may entertain you to know I actually do the kind of stuff I write about. Sometimes in unexpected circumstances.

On Wednesday I went to one of the local munches. A ‘munch’, as you no doubt know, is a regular meeting that takes place in a public location where no-one dresses up (much) and there's no overt BDSM play. They're places where people new to BDSM, the area, etc. can feel welcomed. This particular munch uses the upstairs room of a pub, so is to that extent private.

I walked in and was immediately asked to do an impromptu bondage workshop. Someone who’d agreed to do one hadn’t turned up. I had no ropes with me but a few other people did. I borrowed them, did some basic stuff, got people to practice on each other and talked about safety issues as well.

The stuff I did wasn't highly technical - one useful knot and a style known as a 'karada' plus some of safety issues. But it was entertaining and hope other people found it so as well...

While I’m on the topic, Velvet and I will also be doing a suspension bondage demo at After Dusk next Thurs, 19 May in the UK midlands area. I'm not going to repost all the contact details here because they're already on my other joint blog with Velvet, DeliciouslyDeviant (see the post there on 'Writing bondage, doing bondage'). Or mail me. We haven’t done any demos for a while, so this weekend will have to involve some time to run through the stuff.

Well, now you know, if it wasn't obvious before, I don't just write about stuff.

In other news, there are some plans for erotic story readings and such. More to come when I’ve sorted details.

Thursday, 12 May 2011

I'm assuming you know (a) a munch is a meeting of like-minded people, usually monthly, in a public space to discuss matters of mutual interest and they're a common feature of the kink world, and (b) as I've mentioned before there are currently five, and likely soon to be six or seven, BDSM munches local to me despite the paucity of actual BDSM events in the area.

This particular munch has the upstairs room of a pub, so is to that extent private.

I walked in and was immediately asked to do an impromptu bondage workshop! Apparently someone who'd agreed to do one hadn't turned up. I had no ropes with me - though some others did and I borrowed them, did some basic stuff and got people to practice on each other, talked about safety issues as well. It was fun, and the first time it's happened to me outside of a club.

While I'm on the topic, lest you think I write about stuff I don't practice, Velvet and I will be doing a suspension bondage demo at After Dusk next Thurs, 19 May - the link covers two connected events, After Dark and After Dusk, and if you have a Fetlife account you can see more details here. If not - Fetlife registration is quick and free.

Other stuff bubbling under - plans for erotic story readings and such... more to come when I've sorted details.

Monday, 9 May 2011

Actually this may be misleading, because what you think of as a sex shop and what I consider to be one could be rather different.

Yes, the two 'adult' shops in town selling clothing, DVDs and sex toys are still very much around. However, we used to have a local ropeworks. They made some of their own and bought in other stock, and you could get anything from garden twine to the rigging for a tall ship or foot-diameter hawsers. They also did a huge range of snaplocks, clips and other fastenings, canvases for trucks and marquees for events.

Since I tend to buy rope in industrial quantities, if only a couple of times a year, that was where I bought it. And not just for bondage, I might add (for that I mostly bought 7mm diameter polyprop braided, in different colours). For example I used them to source stuff to set-dress a stage for a goth band and similar things as well.

I rolled up there this afternoon and found the sign had gone. The factory next door told me they'd closed two months back. The recession had done for them.

It's a shame the recession is hitting the small businesses so hard. In future I'm evidently going to have to order online if I want stuff in quantity and at a good price - though I admit to having a yen for some rope laid from fibreoptic filaments I saw a while back from a specialist supplier... think how good that would look in a club...

Sunday, 8 May 2011

It's a movement not just to relaim the word, but as Boston organiser Siobhan Connors says, "is in protest of a culture that we think is too permissive when it comes to rape and sexual assault. It's to bring awareness to the shame and degradation women still face for expressing their sexuality... essentially for behaving in a healthy and sexual way."

It came about as a result of a senior police officer in Toronto advising female students to "avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised." (Yes, he's since been disciplined).

I'll hold off on a long moral rant about how something like SlutWalk shouldn't even be necessary in today's society, because evidently it still is.

Saturday, 7 May 2011

I forgot to mention I'm very pleased to see a friend of ours, Jon Wilson, has some of his pics being used on the covers of recent Renaissance Sizzler books - not my books, but never mind, and congratulations to him. You can see the images here and here. He's a very talented erotica/fetish photographer - and works over a broad range of other subjects as well.

He doesn't have a proper website at the moment but some of his images are accessible as lo-res pics via his Myspace page.

Seems I don't have the capacity to blog here more than twice a week or so, because we've been going supporting various family members though their illnesses and issues, and working quite long hours (yes, the second bdsm novel is nearly done).

But we did find time to go to the Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar a couple of weeks ago and buy some new toys, and then get to After Dark on Thursday for the first time in about two years and use said kit. If you don't know where/what these places are and really feel a burning desire to know (or indeed if you have other burning desires I or we might be able to help with...?) you'll have to mail me.

After Dark was, as it always has been, a friendly and relaxed place in which we met up with some long-lost friends on the fetish scene. And played extensively with chains, ropes, various floggers, canes (no, you don't get to see pics of V's arse afterwards) and forced orgasm via a massager I bought well over a decade ago that sounds like it has a turbo-boost V8 engine and is of around that kind of power.

Anyway - it's the last push on getting the novel done, though other work is now also in the pipeline; always happens, you think you'll get a clear run at something and then the emails for stuff on short deadlines start arriving... As often happens I got 3/4 of the way through and then decided to add some earlier scenes and change others to conform to how I want the later stuff to pan out.

Oh - apart from that I wrote a short story that could well become a scene-setter for a novella, and didn't put it out on the DeliciouslyDeviant blog, and by way of compensation started a piece of flash fiction to post that ended up as 2400 words. Go to DeliciouslyDeviant to read it, though... It has, if indirectly, a pulp fiction/men's adventure mag kind of vibe about it - a subject I'm hoping to post more about at some time in the near(ish) future.

Monday, 2 May 2011

... but it's only grabbed my attention that that there's a whole Star Wars Slave Leia metal bikini thing going on. I only found out due to extended poking about looking at pulp fiction and SF for a project I want to start in the next few days.

We're talking about the outfit Princess Leia wears in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, when she's been held captive by Jabba the Hutt and placed in his harem.

As Wikipedia describes it, the iconic slave girl costume comprises 'a copper brassiere fastened over the neck and behind the back with string,] copper plates at the groin in front and back, a red silk loincloth, and leather boots. There were other various adornments, including a hair fastener, a snake arm-wrap and two bracelets. Last, there was the chain and collar that bound her to Jabba which, ironically, she uses to strangle him.'

The outfit was apparently inspired by the work of fantasy/SF illustrator Frank Frazetta, much of it done in the 60s and 70s - the era of pulp, which is how I followed my nose to discover more. There are both official and unofficial websites devoted to his work.

While the Leia slave outfit, in terms of Frazetta's artwork at least, is actually rather conservative it became a cult sex symbol, 'burned into the sweaty subconscious of a generation of fanboys hitting puberty in the spring of 1983' as a Wired editor put it.

What intrigues me is that it seems also to have been burned into the consciousness of several generations of women. Some SF and Star Wars conventions have dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of women wearing this outfit. Don't believe me? there's a website devoted specifically to the costume, leiasmetalbikiniLcom. Alternatively, Google 'slave leia' and/or 'metal bikini' and look at the images section, or the G4 segment on Youtube of the Princess Leia Bikini Contest at ComicCon. And it's by no means the only convention that hosts such an event.

So... I can certainly understand the male perspective on this costume. And I can see that for a women who's confident about herself, it's a great outfit to wear that will show off your physical charms and assets, either in private or at a public event such as a SF convention where it's now accepted as normal female attire. You'd need to have a certain amount of courage to wear it, but at the same time it does make me wonder whether the Slave Leia thing is treated as irrelevant, or whether there's just a little bit of submissive fantasy going on in their heads...

Now this is the kind of action I could be interested in. I'm clearly going to have to turn myself into a morbidly obese sluglike crime lord...